Excerpts

The following excerpts are intended as a kind of ‘trailer’ to give a flavour of the writing in Spurious Games. They are selected in a way that reflects some of the themes but gives little access to the plot.

Also propping up the bar in the Ship was a local submariner called Ballentine Bodger who was prone to entertain locals with gloomy tales denigrating women. He edged his way across, seemingly eager to add his two pennyworth. Bodger’s account of the demise of Rooker was even more graphic than Francesca’s.

‘When my uncle died’, said Bodger, sipping a large rum and coke and entering pub storyteller mode, ‘I made the mistakeof sneaking behind the auditorium — I cannot bring myself to call it a chapel — and looked through the little peephole that allows the crematorium workers to monitor the combustion of the coffin. Soon after they turned up the gas, the lid of uncle’s coffin flew off and the corpse sat up for the last time as if startled, eyes popping with amazement like in Stanley Spencer’s Cookham Resurrection. They said it was quite normal, but best not viewed by the mourners. Richard’s death was horribly reminiscent of that.

———————————————————————————————–

The prevalence of intellectual nonsense in modern culture rode high in Professor Pritchard’s mental life, and he had a well-deserved reputation as a celebrated iconoclast. Academically he was something of a polyglot and alongside his main research field he had over time conducted a number of small-scale research projects that challenged the received wisdom of specific interest groups. As a born-again agnostic brought up in the intellectual slum of an evangelical Welsh chapel, Caradoc had a particular distaste for American televangelism in programs like DayStar. His spoof paper, ‘Consider the Lilies: DayStar’s Joseph Prince as Male Fashion Icon’ was considered as a classic.

———————————————————————————————–

‘[County captain] Owen [Rhys] cleared his throat and put on what he considered to be an appropriately sacerdotal voice. ‘The University of Melchizedek’, he intoned, ‘is the Earth Campus of an inter-galactic institution sharing its enlightened consciousness telepathically with other planets in the solar system.’ They both laughed, the general tone of lighthearted amusement reinforced by John ostentatiously picking up the pamphlet by one corner between finger and thumb as if it were in some way toxic to the touch. It was a frivolity that would in retrospect come back to haunt him.

———————————————————————————————–

‘I could not help noticing’, remarked DI John Logos to [Owen Rhys’s partner] Vanessa, ‘that you have carefully arranged two sizeable vintage soft toys, a bear and an elephant, on the window ledge as if admiring the view.’

‘They are not toys’ responded Vanessa sharply. ‘They are Teddy and Jummy, my dear companions from before my first birthday, and personalities in their own right.’

‘I realize that Teddy and Jummy may not seem at first blush to be ideal companions’, ventured Owen, ‘but in a way they protect my relationship with Vanessa as we both elect from time to time to talk through them, ventriloquist-like, as it were. When we choose to express our thoughts through Jummy we signal our intent by prefacing the remarks with the tag line “Jummy speaking”. Dear Jummy acts as a kind of cartilage in the grinding bones of our relationship. I believe that the ceramic potter Grayson Perry has a similar close relationship with his childhood teddy bear Alan Measles.’

———————————————————————————————–

———————————————————————————————–

Robyn Bishop’s position was at one level a simple one that could be asserted confidently, untroubled by postmodernism’s mantra on multiple sexual discourses. Patriarchal societies, oppressive of women by definition, she firmly believed, had historically always sought to codify and control sexual behaviour in a way that was to the advantage of men. Female bodies could be acquired freehold as property, as in marriage, or leased out to men on a temporary basis, which was the lot of the whore. Moreover, the prostitute was despised and stigmatised for offering this service and used to be subjected to invasive medical checks under the Contagious Diseases Acts, while the men got off scot-free, seen merely as exercising their biological imperatives.

———————————————————————————————–

Meanwhile Superintendent Polgooth was having his own local difficulties.  ‘I am happy to pay for your time, my dear’, he said unctuously, ‘but to be honest I am here, er, for the company not the sex.’

‘My company?’ she laughed. ‘Nobody has said that to me before. You’re a cop aren’t you? Sod off or I’ll press the alarm bell and summon Mr Bollard.’

———————————————————————————————–

On a chain around her neck Maria Cluedo wore a little silver representation of an electric chair where others dangled a crucifix. ‘Since it is clearly sartorially acceptable to celebrate martyrs by reminding ourselves of the method of their execution’, she would say, ‘my choice is Ethel Rosenberg.’ If there was a single moment that encapsulated her steady intellectual drift from Catholicism it was when her local priest defended the authenticity of the Turin Shroud by reminding his flock that Satan was quite capable of falsifying the carbon dating results.

———————————————————————————————–

‘Yet when we look at the game itself and don’t try to treat historical chess geniuses as patients’, continued Colin, ‘it is hard not to get another story and perhaps from the standpoint of this investigation a more pertinent one. There is some suggestion in the literature that specific fundamental attributes of the game of chess itself constitute in some circumstances a mental health hazard.

———————————————————————————————–

Sir Percival [Badgeot, Chairman of the GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group] introduced Item 1 on the agenda in his usual faintly angry and gruff manner, pre-empting the discussion as far as possible, as he always did when anticipating dissent.

‘I acknowledge that the Snowden revelations on mass surveillance have been detrimental to the reputation both of the CIA and our own GCHQ’, he opened, ‘and I can give you my considered opinion here. There is a clear need for defensive retaliatory psych-ops that at least give the impression of being frank and open. With regard to the JTRIG, whose existence was revealed by Snowden, the task we face is to counter not indignation but ridicule. A ludicrous image has got about of our chaps as hybrids between spin doctors and cyber-magicians, deceiving people by conjuring with information. And I am not a man to put up with derision.’

———————————————————————————————–

‘The GCHQ Automatic Writing Monitoring Unit has never believed for a single moment the validity of claims made on behalf of mediums supposedly receiving messages telepathically from alien contacts elsewhere in the galaxy, or the dead relatives of the duped for that matter. No way. We regard them without exception as frauds, although doubtless some deceive themselves the better to deceive others.’

———————————————————————————————–

‘“Ask your questions”, Entrails demanded in her strange metallic voice, “as there is great danger and we have little time to lose. Members of a dissident, possibly breakaway cell in the Melchizedek fraternity are plotting something on a calamitous scale. Maybe even a fake rupture. My written warning was from the other world where all things are known. Put me to the test”.’

‘The first question was from Rupert, a new member of the AWMU who also happens to be a chess player. “Has any serious master-level chess game been won following the dubious early queen sacrifice in the Leningrad Nimzo-Indian?” he asked.’

‘Several, including Boris Nisman v Lars Karlsson 1971’, replied the voice instantly, ‘although Kirsan Ilyumzhinov believes the sacrifice to be unsound with insufficient compensation given correct play. Please ask probing questions. You have only three because of psychokinetic limitations at this intergalactic distance.’

———————————————————————————————–

In August 2011 Elroy Willis posted on the Internet an inventive work of pure fiction that became known as the spoof Rapture. It was widely believed to be true and was reported as such by The Independent on August 19. The story, which had the verisimilitude of considerable detail, ran as follows: an Arkansas housewife called Georgann Williams was driving in Little Rock when she saw a bearded figure in a toga that she supposed to be Jesus. The figures she saw floating upward in the air at the same time she took to be Christians responding to The Rapture, and as a fervent believer she climbed though the sunroof of her moving car in order to join them, shouting “He is back!” Predictably, she perished on the roadway as well as causing a multiple pile up.’

‘And this unlikely tale was believed to be true?’ said Charlotte with some incredulity.

‘Remember that Arkansas is not Cornwall’, replied Caradoc, ‘and besides, the incidental details were quite convincing. It was only some time later that a rather chuffed Elroy Williams admitted the hoax, and Time Magazine voted it “spoof of the year”.’

———————————————————————————————–

Inside the cabinet [of the replica Mechanical Turk] Barnaby was congratulating himself on having mastered the sliding tray that allowed him to avoid being spotted during the opening of the cabinet doors in their predetermined order, and was mentally rehearsing how to operate the pantograph that controlled the Turk’s playing right arm and the magnet system that allowed him to pick up and move chess pieces to squares of his choosing. His pocket chess set, lit by a flickering candle, was the one on which he proposed to do his thinking, while any smoke from the candle swirled out through the Turk’s clay pipe.

‘Who is going to be the first brave soul to challenge the Turk?’

The first to step forward was Guardian journalist Stephen Moss, who in his usual energetic style was covering the event in a “hands on” kind of way as part of the world tour cum chess odyssey that would lead eventually to his entertainingly droll book The Rookie.

———————————————————————————————–

After some further flickering a black and white image then emerged that John Logos recognized immediately as a parody of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Cluedo was pacing the shore dressed as a crusader knight but looking considerably more distraught than Antonius Block. A wooden chess set with its pieces miraculously intact floated in on the tide, but there was no sign of an opponent, neither monk nor deadly apparition. After some considerable time, just as the thin sun was setting on the dreary landscape, the splash of oars was heard and a rusty barge appeared out of the mist propelled by a shriveled old man in a cowl whose blazing yellow eyes, haggard cheeks and rough beard sent a chill through the audience watching on the VDU.

‘Is your name Death?’ asked Cluedo-as-knight. ‘I was expecting you to come along the shore, not out of the sea mist.

‘I deal with the dying but am not myself Death’, the apparition replied. ‘My name is Charon and I am the ferryman of Hades’. He shipped his single oar with an arm as wrinkled as the ribbed sea sand as that of Coleridge’s ancient mariner. ‘You are seriously mistaken, Cluedo, as you have already lost the game of your life just by agreeing to play it. This is no seashore but the banks of the river Styx. Were it not for this damned perpetual mist we could just about make out the other side.’